Courthouse a Home Away From Home

For a Father, Son and Daughter Who Are Lawyers, Chance to Share in Family Is Just Down the Hall

Each day, chances are good that Bill, Amy and Jon Jeffress will be applying their legal talents just a few doors down the hall from each other in the same stately office building near the U.S. Capitol.

But the father, daughter and son are not racking up billable hours at a white-shoe family firm.

They are reporting for work at the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse, Washington's federal court.

On the sixth floor, father William H. Jeffress Jr., 61, one of Washington's most prominent defense attorneys, has been busy with pretrial hearings in a case that has rocked the White House. He represents I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, who is accused of lying to investigators probing the leak of a CIA operative's name.

On the second floor, daughter Amy, 41, has been checking on narcotics cases she oversees for the U.S. Attorney's Office -- including a trial involving a ring that is accused of peddling cocaine and heroin.

And in a magistrate courtroom down the hall, Jonathan, 35, has been representing poor people as a public defender. Last month, he defended a woman accused of creating phony checks and, more recently, a convicted felon charged with carrying a 9mm handgun as he drove through the city.

The family's workdays -- and once in a while, their lunch breaks -- overlap in the court's marble hallways.

"I don't think you can go into the courthouse now and not run into at least one and usually two or three of them," said A.J. Kramer, the federal public defender in Washington and Jon's boss.

"It's really unusual for a family of lawyers to be in the same city, much less the same court," Kramer said. "You've really covered all the bases when you have one on prosecution, one on defense and another doing all kinds of private practice."

It makes for tender moments in a place that can be anything but.

One recent day, Amy, the federal prosecutor, spotted Jon, the public defender, while he was talking in a conference room with a client. The sister in Amy naturally walked over to kiss her brother on the cheek.

"Was that awkward for you?" she later asked him.